Pictures say a thousand words.

Donna came home late last night and I opened the door. The first thing she asked was, "Are you writing?"

SLAM - It felt like that. A slam in the face. She didn't mean it in any other way other than wanting to know why I was still awake and if I was writing. So its not her fault at all. But I felt like a lazy bum when it comes to writing. From a crappy day at work, then to come home without any motivation to write a word, dude… its torturous!

So… No, I was not writing. No, I was not motivated to write. Yes, I was just messing around on the computer doing nothing productive whatsoever. It sucked.

But that evening was filled with this new found motivation for something else. Call it an excuse to not write. Call it guilt for not taking more pictures of my kids. Call it whatever you want to call it. It ain't writing but it sure beats unproductivity.

I suck as a photographer. Seriously. Jessica can shoot better pictures than I can. Jake can shoot better than I can. I've thought maybe I should try and see things from a 14 year old or 5 year old perspective and shoot like that. It doesn’t work. So yesterday I sped down to Barnes & Noble to find a book called, How to Photograph Your Life: Capturing Everyday Moments with Your Camera and Your Heart by Nick Kelsh.

They had one copy and I sat there and read it from cover to cover. It was short, sweet, to the point and absolutely inspiring for those wannabe digital camera photographers. I didn’t buy the book, but I plan to. Not only did it give me helpful hints on lighting and what to capture, it was easy to follow and even Jessica and Donna can benefit from such a wonderful book.

Well, this prompted me to get the camera out and shoot away.

So I followed my kids around and took about 100 shots of them doing their late evening activities. Alot of the photos were just plain awful. Lighting was bad, boring angles, boring boring boring. But that's what's great about digital photography. Just trash em at no extra cost!

I tested out the manual settings of the camera then after taking a bunch of pics, I picked two of my favorites. Then I ran them through Photoshop for some quick manipulation and photo fun - mainly to play with the backgrounds.

Here they are in pure form and then manipulated - resized to a width of 400 pixels to fit into this blog entry.


I liked this one of Jacob because he was so tired of me taking pictures he would avoid me at all costs. This was the very last picture where I was able to see his face versus him turning away every time I'd shoot. What's the big deal anyway? He was playing X-Box. So what if I got in the way once in a while!


Then I did some speckled filter on the background. I usually just blur the background but wanted to try something different. I don't like the speckling too much...


Bella is a hard one. She rarely poses and runs when I want to take a picture. So alot of her shots were blured as she dodged the camera. But once she engaged in her little drawing, I shot away and came up with this.


To get rid of all the noise in the bg, xbox, carpet, hanging cord, I used the colored pencil filter as the background. Its kinda neat and I think I'm a fan of it. I'd still use the motion blur for most of these types of photoshop deals but this one was pretty neat.

I'll experiment more. Having low light and not using the flash really forced me to have a steady hand to avoid a blurry picture.

I still have to learn about all these manual settings and how to use em.

AND...

Back to writing since that’s how I started this entry.

I was supposed to meet with my cousin regarding the artwork for my comic strip. I have aproximately 30+ scripts ready for layout and production. I still have to title the strip but can't come up with a 'non-writer' type title. Normally I can sit down and do a four panel strip with not much motivation. Last night I couldn’t. But will get back on track tonight.

Instead of buying the ‘picture’ book I actually purchased three other books for reference on doing comic strip art and work.

Cartoon Cool: How To Draw New Retro-style Characters by Christopher Hart


Action! Cartooning by Ben Caldwell

&


How to Draw Cartoons for Comic Strips by Christopher Hart

I also found out useful information on syndication. I’m on the right track. They say,

“To get an idea of just how tough it is to become a successful cartoonist, consider the following. King Features, the world's largest syndicate, receives more than 6,000 submissions each year. Of these, two or three might be launched as new features. Perhaps two-thirds of the features introduced by syndicates each year fail to find an audience within five years and are discontinued.”

Sounds disheartening doesn’t it? As a screenwriter, the odds are probably just as bad… or worse! I like being a long shot!

SLAM. Sure… it felt like that. But whenever a door is slammed in your face, it just means you have to open another one!!!